Studio Ghibli via GKIDS

[MifuneFan]

GKIDS has acquired the North American rights to 10 YEARS WITH HAYAO MIYAZAKI.

Step behind the scenes with Miyazaki himself in this 4-part documentary series from Kaku Arakawa, who also directed NEVER-ENDING MAN: HAYAO MIYAZAKI.

Stay tuned for more news!

[MifuneFan]

Spirited Away: Live on Stage coming in November

DESCRIPTION

Hayao Miyazaki’s Academy Award®-winning* animated feature film comes to life in this first-ever stage adaptation full of dazzling sets, captivating musical numbers, and wondrous puppets of beloved characters. Adapted and directed by Tony Award® winner John Caird (Les Misérables), SPIRITED AWAY: Live on Stage features two unique casts and performances filmed during the show’s acclaimed 2022 run at Tokyo’s historic Imperial Theatre, featuring Kanna Hashimoto and Mone Kamishiraishi as Chihiro.

[MifuneFan]

Thought I'd mention the Collector's Editions for Spirited Away, and Princess Mononoke are both listed in Shout's Going OOP / While Supplies Last list now. They have hundreds in stock, and it is available elsewhere so no immediate rush to get it if you want them

https://shoutfactory.com/collections...ctor-s-edition

https://shoutfactory.com/collections...ctor-s-edition

[TolerancEJ]

Spirited Away: Live on Stage links for Nov 14:

GKIDS

Shout!

Amazon.com

[burnin-snikers]

Hello everyone!
I think most Ghibli fans are well aware that for the North American release of Laputa Joe Hisaishi recorded a new soundtrack with an orchestra. However, most likely, few people know that long before this, in 1984, the year of Nausicaä's release, in addition to the original monophonic soundtrack, an orchestral soundtrack was also recorded for the film. And in stereo! The complete stereo track for the film (including, in addition to the new soundtrack, updated panoramic sound effects and actors' lines) was released on vinyl and later on CD as "Symphonic Edition". As far as I know, unfortunately the film has never been shown or released on disc with this stereo track.
Technical data of the vinyl record can be viewed here:
VGMDB.
I became aware of this five years ago, then, at my request, my good friend bought this vinyl release and digitized it. He did some minor sound filtering to remove the excessive hiss and noise common to vinyl recordings. And my goal was to sync the resulting recording to the Japanese Blu-ray edition of the film. Because I'm not a big fan of Nausicaä, and because I'm busy with other responsibilities, and the difficulty of synchronizing the recording itself, I've been doing this work off and on for the past five years. The result is a new stereo audio track that fits both Japanese editions of the film. If desired, it can now also be easily synchronized with Western releases.
Technical data of the resulted file:

[Show spoiler]

General
Complete name                            : U:\Vinyl_Nausicaa_Symphony_Edition_Blu-ray.w64
Format                                   : Wave64
File size                                : 5.02 GiB
Duration                                 : 1 h 57 min
Overall bit rate mode                    : Constant
Overall bit rate                         : 6 144 kb/s

Audio
Format                                   : PCM
Format profile                           : Float
Codec ID                                 : 3
Codec ID/Hint                            : IEEE 
Duration                                 : 1 h 57 min
Bit rate mode                            : Constant
Bit rate                                 : 6 144 kb/s
Channel(s)                               : 2 channels
Sampling rate                            : 96.0 kHz
Bit depth                                : 32 bits
Stream size                              : 5.02 GiB (100%)

Audio quality of newly synced stereo track:
Left channel.
The initial ripping of vinyl was intentionally done in the highest quality, since when converting for DVD and Blu-ray, the loss of quality will be lower than if we used a CD recording as a source. In addition to the aforementioned very minor noise cleaning, during the synchronization process I removed several clicks and echoes of cues that should not be in the recording (this problem also exists in the Japanese mono track). The main difficulty was that the original recording was made for theatrical release at 24 frames per second, while it is 23,976 on Blu-ray. In order to preserve the original great sound of the music, I deliberately did not use time stretching and similar effects, but as a result, synchronization was very difficult and took a lot of time. I needed to manually remove about 300 points of desync!
At the moment, I am intentionally not posting my stereo track for public viewing, since just as the GKids edition of Laputa included both synthesizer and symphonic soundtracks, it would also be nice to hear both original mono and symphonic stereo soundtracks on some future editions of Nausicaä.
I sent a similar message to Ghibli's well-known email p***@ghibli.jp, but in response I received just the standard reply that they do not accept email requests. I'm sure that GKids representatives are reading this thread, so if they or distributors associated with Ghibli films have an interest in the stereo track, I will be happy to provide it for review and answer any questions. Please PM me.
I don't insist that Studio Ghibli or its distributors use our recording. If they wish, they can independently synchronize the original recording (if it is available) or continue to ignore its existence (as has been the case for the past 40 years)

[HipsterTrash]

Random question: is the GKIDS releases of Miyazaki films superior over the Disney releases? I heard that the subtitles are much closer to what's said.

[gwfb5]

Originally Posted by HipsterTrash

Random question: is the GKIDS releases of Miyazaki films superior over the Disney releases? I heard that the subtitles are much closer to what's said.

Try this.
https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...postcount=3039

If you want the TL;DR though, the only Disney Blu-rays that used dubtitles instead of proper subtitles were...

Pom Poko
Princess Mononoke
Castle in the Sky

Kiki's Delivery Service has dubtitles on both releases, but the ones on the GKIDS edition are a little more faithful.

Nausicaä didn't have any subtitle issues, but it did have the English credits burned into the film. The GKIDS release fixed that, so it will show the OG Japanese credits if the JP audio is selected.

[CoffeeDrinker]

Originally Posted by gwfb5

Kiki's Delivery Service has dubtitles on both releases, but the ones on the GKIDS edition are a little more faithful.

Sorry if I'm bringing something that's been addressed before, but I tracked down a copy of the Streamline Pictures dub that the subtitles were supposedly based on, and compared it to the literal English subtitles on Netflix. (which I believe would be the same subs used on the GKIDS blu-ray disc)

I know that there are some things that are inaccurate, like when Kiki says "fat, fat fat", however, the subs are different from the Streamline dub, and much more accurate to the original script. Coffee over hot chocolate, the line about disco, etc. The streamline dub is different, I tried several scenes.

Also, just a general question, as I'm somebody who has recently been upgrading to the GKIDS releases for the ones where Disney botched the blu ray (so far I got Princess Mononoke, Nausicaä, Castle in the Sky, I'm missing Pom Poko and Kiki) --the Nausicaä transfer has different colours than the Disney blu-ray. Both seem to be based on 4K scans. But I'm not sure which one is more accurate. On the one hand, the GKIDS release seems to have a higher degree of details, but also things are a bit redder than the Disney blu-ray, including Nausicaä's hair colour. Was Nausicaä red head in the original? I'm only questioning this because she has brown hair in all of the manga illustrations, and her hair is certainly more brown in the Disney blu-ray. Both transfers look good overall, and they have a filmic appearance.

I'm not sure what to make of it, given the colours between the Disney and GKIDS release are pretty similar outside of this film. Does anyone know the history of the scans of these films? The booklet it came with talked about the restoration a bit, but it was for the 2010 restoration which the Disney blu-ray was based on.

[eightslicesofpie]

Where the hell is the Boy and the Heron announcement

[ckmoak]

Originally Posted by eightslicesofpie

Where the hell is the Boy and the Heron announcement

Unless I'm very much mistaken, which I certainly hope to be, I would have assumed that Netflix's purchase of the distribution on it would mean that GKids won't be able to put out a disc?

[the-pi-guy]

Originally Posted by ckmoak

Unless I'm very much mistaken, which I certainly hope to be, I would have assumed that Netflix's purchase of the distribution on it would mean that GKids won't be able to put out a disc?

I am pretty sure Netflix didn't buy the distribution rights.

It is getting put on Max first in the US. Netflix signed an agreement with GKIDs to stream it afterwards.

GKIDs is still releasing the movie digitally and presumably physically as well.

[MifuneFan]

The Netflix agreement excludes US and Japan, so it has no bearing on a physical release from GKIDS.

[ckmoak]

Hooray! I'm very happy to have been completely wrong!

[drush9999]

I've been champing at the bit for The Boy and the Heron. Would be dumb not releasing it on physical considering the fanbase for Ghibli.

[gwfb5]

Good News!

Originally Posted by MifuneFan

GKIDS releasing The Boy and the Heron on 4K in July! There will also be a Steelbook edition.

https://store.gkids.com/collections/...-and-the-heron



Steelbook

[MifuneFan]

Only Yesterday and Porco Rosso Steelbooks down to $16.19 at Amazon

[kenrik]

Are GKIDS releases only in japanese/english or also have french and other languages?

[MifuneFan]

Originally Posted by kenrik

Are GKIDS releases only in japanese/english or also have french and other languages?

Best to check the individual database entries for each, but most titles like Porco Rosso, My Neighbor Totoro, How's Moving Castle, Arrietty, Ponyo, Princess Mononoke and others do have French lossy audio/subs too. Some like Only Yesterday don't have French audio, but include French subtitles.

[kenrik]

Originally Posted by MifuneFan

Best to check the individual database entries for each, but most titles like Porco Rosso, My Neighbor Totoro, How's Moving Castle, Arrietty, Ponyo, Princess Mononoke and others do have French lossy audio/subs too. Some like Only Yesterday don't have French audio, but include French subtitles.

Thanks! I did that using the first page after asking, most of them have french, those who dont have the french subbtitles as you said. I would have like The Wind Rises in french since i had downloaded it many yeara ago and alwaya watched it in french but ill probably get it because the release is a 5/5 at everything, i like extras

[MifuneFan]

Originally Posted by MifuneFan

Only Yesterday and Porco Rosso Steelbooks down to $16.19 at Amazon

Spirited Away Steelbook now down to $16.19 too